


Going Forward

by letterfromtrenwith



Category: Blue Bloods (TV)
Genre: AU from the end of s9, F/M, it was also supposed to be short turned into this 10k monster, this was meant to be fluff with a tiny bit of angst but now it's angst with a bit of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 21:37:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20495735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letterfromtrenwith/pseuds/letterfromtrenwith
Summary: Just a few glimpses of what the future might hold.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collection of a few looks into the future life of Jamie & Eddie (and the Reagans at large) from just after their marriage onwards.

They were on their honeymoon when they decided it just wasn’t going to work out.

“We had a good run, Ed.” Jamie shrugged his shoulders in resignation before taking a swig of his ridiculously overpriced Italian beer.

Eddie swirled her equally overpriced wine around the glass, eventually nodding her head in agreement. There were some things it was useless to fight against; sometimes you just had to accept the inevitable.

“Yeah, we did. But you’re right, there really is no other option.”

“We’ll only end up making ourselves miserable if we try to stick it out.”

“For sure. Quit while we’re ahead and all that.” She raised her glass to her lips, savouring the flavour of the wine while she ordered her thoughts. “Still sad, though.”

“Sure.” Jamie reached out, covering her hand with this. “But we’ll always have lots of great stories – and now we can go out and make some different ones.”

“Yes, we can.” Eddie smiled, with only a little sadness. “I’ll put in my transfer request as soon as we get back.”

And so, Officer Edit Janko cleared out her locker at the 29th precinct, and Officer Edit Reagan – how often had she gone back and forth on _that_ change – reported for duty at the 21st.

~

To his credit, and her gratitude, Eddie’s new boss didn’t ease her in gently. Less than a week after she’d arrived, Sgt. Croft caught her coming out of the squad room juggling a stack of paperwork.

“Hey, Reagan, meet your new partner – Probationary Officer Cole Bellamy.”

“Wh – “ Eddie managed before her brain took in exactly what he’d said: _Probationary Officer_. He was making her a TO. She cycled through a half a dozen responses to this in about five seconds, before settling on: “Hey, nice to meet you.”

“All right, that’s enough for the Meet Cute. You can get to know each other and then you’re rolling out in 2-1 Edward in 30 minutes.” With that, Croft strode off, leaving Eddie looking at her charge, who she immediately mentally nicknamed ‘Bambi’. Bellamy was not much taller than her, fair haired and freckled, and looked more like he should be appearing in Archie comics than trussed up in an NYPD uniform complete with shield and gun. Then again, she’d spent her first few years on the job looking like an 8-year-old boy dressed up for Halloween, so who was she to judge?

“Reagan? Like, Commissioner Reagan?” Bellamy had a surprisingly deep voice for his appearance.

“Yeah, “ she sighed. Intellectually, she’d known she would have to face this question pretty much every time she met someone knew, but the last week had been pretty tiring nevertheless. “Like Commissioner Reagan. He’s my father-in-law.”

“Oh. Cool.” Bellamy gave a small nod and seemed to consider the matter closed. “So, which way to the car?”

She liked this kid.

~

It was not long after this that Nicky upped and announced at Sunday dinner that she’d officially been accepted into the next NYPD Academy class. Needless to say, that did not pass without comment.

“I mean, Erin can hardly be surprised. Nicky’s been talking about joining the department for years, right?” Eddie eventually asked on the ride home, them having gone part of the way in slightly stunned silence. Dinner had broken up rather unceremoniously, and Jamie had suggested they make a discreet escape.

“Sure, but she’s kept changing her mind, and she took the test a couple of years ago, so I think Erin was getting her hopes up that the idea had gone away.” Jamie had an odd look on his face, which Eddie struggled for a moment to interpret.

“Wait…did you already know about this?”

“Just since Wednesday.”

“Wednesday?!” Eddie couldn’t believe that he’d kept something like this from her. For four whole days nevertheless.

“Nicky told me when we went to the range. She made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone else yet.” He anticipated her response and cut her off before she could make it. “I know you’re not just anyone else, but it wasn’t my secret to tell. To anyone. Nicky swore she was going to tell Erin next – I had no idea she was going to just drop the bombshell like that today.”

“I imagine that’s not the only thing you’ve ever kept secret for Nicky.”

“No. It’s not.” He glanced sideways at her, clearly a little confused by how quickly her anger had drained away.

“She’s lucky she’s always had you to talk to. Most people don’t have that.” She was thinking a little wistfully of her own young adulthood, her preoccupied parents, too busy fighting with each other to be remotely interested in her, except when her dad wanted something from her, or her mom wanted to criticise her. She had no siblings, no cousins or aunts or uncles to share her worries with. With his usual perceptiveness, Jamie seemed to have followed her train of thought, and he let go of the wheel for a moment to briefly touch her arm.

“Nicky was pretty excited to tell you, too, you know. She knew you’d be proud of her.”

“I am so proud of her. I imagine Erin is, too, deep down. She’s just worried. Like every mom. Like yours was.”

“Erin’s not the only one who worries. We all worry about each other. Dad was a Captain by the time I was old enough to know what was going on and I still worried about him. I worry about him now, and he spends twelve hours a day in just about the most secure office in New York City.” This was an unusually frank admission from her husband, and Eddie decided to meet it with one of her own.

“Well, I worry about you. All the time. Especially now that I’m not there to watch your back.” She gave him a small smile as he pulled into his parking spot, making sure he knew that last part wasn’t entirely serious, even if it wasn’t completely a joke, either.

“Come on. How much trouble can I get into behind the custody desk? Besides, I’ve got Witten to look out for me now.”

“Yeah, well, she better.”

~

Eddie had to confess to feeling a little jealous of Witten. Not in a romantic kind of way, that would be ridiculous for about a hundred reasons. But whenever Jamie told her a story of some fantastic collar they’d made, or a weird situation they’d rolled up on, Eddie remembered that she and Jamie could never ride together again. She’d get over this touch of regret eventually, and she knew they’d been totally right to finally go their separate ways on the job, but it would take a little time.

She_ was _thoroughly enjoying riding with Bellamy, having quickly revised her ‘Bambi’ judgement. Like all newbies, he had a lot to learn, but he had great instincts and wasn’t afraid to get physical when necessary. It would be an eternal regret that she hadn’t had a camera to capture the expression of the cocky frat-boy who’d thrown a punch at her rookie and ended up face down on the hood of their patrol car within about .5 seconds.

“Hmm, reminds me of another rookie I once knew.” Jamie teased her when she told him about it. “Feeling better about being a TO now?”

“Yeah.” She’d shared her misgivings about training a rookie herself after Croft had partnered them up but Jamie had typically had complete confidence in her. “Although I probably lucked out with my rookie.”

“So did I.” He grinned at her and she laughed.

As it turned out, Eddie had to cut out of Bellamy’s Official Cop Party early since it fell the night before Nicky’s Academy graduation, a highly emotional experience for every Reagan present. Unsurprisingly, she was top of her class and anyone who knew Frank even a tiny bit could see he was practically bursting with pride when she was presented with the Mayor’s award. Erin cheered louder than anyone and, as hard as Eddie sometimes found it to read her sister-in-law, she was pretty sure her tears were mostly of happiness.

Nicky’s preferred list of precincts had pointedly not included any to which another member of the family had been recently assigned, meaning the 29th, 21st, 54th and 12th were all out. In the end, she went to the 38th, and was assigned one Valentina ‘Val’ Cervi as her TO. Frank’s only comment on the matter was that Cervi had an excellent record, but Jamie told Eddie that with a little discreet asking around he had discovered that Cervi’s TO had been none other than Abigail Baker’s husband.

“It’s what he did with me. I didn’t end up with the same training officer as Joe by sheer coincidence. Dad lets himself have one little bit of meddling.”

“Well, can you blame him?”

“Guess not.”

Eddie didn’t get a chance to meet Cervi for a long while, but from everything Nicky said it sounded like the two of them got along like a house on fire. Although she’d been definitely well on her way to coming around to the idea of her daughter on the job, Erin was still visibly much more relaxed once it became clear Nicky was in safe hands.

“You gave your own father a speeding ticket?!” As much as Henry was at the bottom of the list of Jack Boyle’s biggest fans, even he was incredulous. 

“What was I supposed to do?” Nicky spread in her hands in a general appeal. “He was going 41 in a 30 zone!”

“Well, I guess we know who you take after on the job.” Erin slid a glance down the table towards Jamie, who was suddenly very interested in his lamb chop.

~

_“2-1…report… -22…”_ Bellamy gave his radio another whack, which did nothing to improve the crackling and spitting emanating from the speaker.

“What the Hell is up with this thing?”

“Nothing. We’re in the Dead Zone here, Bambi.” Eddie had ended up sticking with the nickname, even if it wasn’t entirely accurate. She’d let it slip inadvertently on one of their early tours and, mortified, attempted to apologise, but he’d laughed it off.

“They used to call me Caspar – as in the Friendly Ghost? – in high school. And I’ve heard way worse cop nicknames. I mean, didn’t you say your husband worked with a guy they call Tuna?”

“The Dead Zone?” he asked now, frowning around him at the fairly pleasant and well-kept buildings.

“Yeah, these couple of blocks are notorious – radios act up all the time.” They didn’t work this sector very often, but she’d heard pretty quickly from the 2-1 vets that everyone hated it because thanks to an unfortunate configuration of bridge and semi high-rise buildings, both radio and cell phone signal sucked in this particular corner. “It picks up just along here.”

Sure enough, once they were back in the car and barely a few hundred yards away, both of their radios burst into life.

_“2-1 Edward, on the air.” _

“2-1 Edward.” Eddie answered, hoping they hadn’t missed an emergency.

“_You’re 10-2, return to precinct forthwith._”

“Wonder what that’s about?” Bellamy obediently put his foot down, just making a light as he hung a left.

“Who knows? Some kinda pain in the ass, probably.”

She immediately regretted that flippant comment when she walked into the squad room to find Sgt. Croft accompanied by a grim faced Sid Gormley.

“What’s happened? Is it Henry? Frank?” She couldn’t imagine any other reason why Lt. Gormley would be here. She hadn’t let her mind go far enough, because what Gormley said next hit her like a ton of bricks.

“No, Eddie. It’s Jamie.”

~

The entire journey to the hospital – accompanied by half the Commissioner’s detail – passed in a daze. Gormley had kept talking to her, trying to tell her what had happened, but she hadn’t taken any of it in – except the word ‘shot’. She felt kind of like she was underwater, everything swirling vaguely around her, sounds muffled and disorienting.

When they finally stepped out of the elevator at Bellevue, and she couldn’t remember getting in it, she found she was late to the party. That stupid radio blackspot, she realised somewhere in the back of her mind.

The waiting room was already filled with cops – a lot of whom she didn’t even recognise. She barely registered the drawn faces of her own family members: Frank, Henry, Erin and Danny were all there, Danny pacing up and down like an animal in a cage.

Eddie’s senses suddenly sharpened and focused on a woman sitting alone amongst the chaos; a small, pale figure dressed in clothes obviously not hers, half curled up in a chair. Witten.

“What happened?” Eddie demanded.

“Eddie – “ Frank appeared at her elbow, but she ignored him.

“What happened?!” If every eye in the room hadn’t turned towards her when she arrived, they most certainly did now, and Witten recoiled at her shout, but she met Eddie’s gaze, her own eyes red-rimmed.

“It – it was a robbery. Two guys in a drug store – they started shooting as soon as we pulled up. This woman inside panicked and ran. Sergeant Reagan had to break cover to get her out of the way. He hit one of the shooters, and then he dragged her behind the car. He was fine, he looked fine but…Oh God.” She broke off, a sob heaving out of her. Eddie wanted to press her for more details but then she looked at where the oversize sweater Witten was wearing had ridden up, exposing her bare arm – and the streak of blood along the inside. Jamie’s blood. Eddie’s sudden burst of emotional energy drained out of her and she felt a solid pair of hands take hold of her, moving her towards a chair.

“He’s still in surgery, Eddie. We just have to wait.” To anyone else, it might have seemed like Frank Reagan was unusually calm in the face of his youngest son being shot, but Eddie knew him well enough to hear the tremor in his voice.

A hand took hold of Eddie’s and she glanced to the left to see she was seated next to Erin, who held onto her tightly but didn’t look at her, instead staring ahead at a uniformed cop who Eddie realised was Nicky. She had just enough presence of mind to squeeze Erin’s hand back.

How long they sat there she didn’t know. There were a lot of comings and goings around her, Danny’s voice raised at someone, Renzulli arriving and saying something to her she didn’t hear, whispered conferences between members of Frank’s detail.

_“…a pharmacy robbery in Manhattan this afternoon.” _The TV had been playing quietly in the corner the whole time, ignored, but these words caught the room’s attention. _“Sources have identified the officer as Sergeant Jameson Reagan, of the 29th Precinct. Sergeant Reagan is a highly decorated officer with over a decade of service to the NYPD. He is also the youngest child of Commissioner Frank Reagan, whose elder son, Detective Joseph Reagan, was killed in the line of duty in 2009…”_

“Turn that damn thing off!” Gormley yelled at a startled nurse who immediately scrambled for a remote.

“Eddie, Eddie…” Another ill-defined period of time later, Erin was tugging on her hand and Eddie managed to finally focus on her sister-in-law’s face. “The doctor.”

Sure enough, a tired, serious-looking woman in scrubs had appeared from somewhere in the depths of the hospital, and was immediately surrounded.

“Dr. Cavanaugh?” Frank asked, clearly not wanting to hear the answer. Neither did Eddie, because if Jamie was gone, she couldn’t hear someone say it out loud.

“He’s alive.” Relief swept over Eddie, and she heard Erin suppress something like a sob next to her. She knew the doctor had more to say. “The bullet hit him in the side of the abdomen. It caused a punctured lung and lodged in his ribs a couple of inches from the spine.”

“It went through his vest?”

“It appears the bullet entered at a vulnerable point where the front and back of the vest are joined.”

“Goddammit.” Someone muttered behind Eddie.

“We were able to remove the bullet and repair most of the damage,” Dr. Cavanaugh continued, “but he lost a lot of blood and, with injuries like this, the shock alone…I’m afraid we just have to wait and hope for the best. The fact that he made it through surgery is encouraging. He’s strong.”

“Yeah, he is.” Frank said quietly. “Can we see him?”

“Yes, but only two or three at a time, please.”

Without being entirely conscious of how, Eddie found herself at the door of a hospital room. She didn’t want to go in, because she was pretty sure this was all a bad dream. It had to be, right? But if she went in there and saw Jamie lying on a bed fighting for his life, it would be real. And it couldn’t be real.

It was, though. Her husband, the love of her life, was in a hospital bed, hooked up to a bunch of bleeping ,whirring machines, lying silent and still. People always said crap about how patients in comas or whatever looked they were just sleeping, but it wasn’t like that. When she came home late or got up early, sometimes she’d watch Jamie sleep until he muttered at her to stop staring and tugged her arm to make her lie down next to him. How the Hell he always knew she was there she had no idea, but he did.

There’d be nothing like that now, because Jamie wasn’t asleep in their warm, comfy bed at home, but in the ICU, clinging onto life because a pair of punks had decided to rip off a fucking drug store. Was her husband going to die for a couple of hundred dollars and few bottles of oxy?

Frank guided her gently into a chair beside the bed and she reached out and took Jamie’s hand. It was too cold, too lifeless. He didn’t even stir when she touched him.

“Jamie…” At first, she didn’t even realise that the tiny, strangled voice was hers. Distantly, she watched Erin stroke Jamie’s hair, murmuring something she couldn’t hear.

Eddie didn’t pay attention to much that happened after that, except listening to the steady beeps of the monitors and watching Jamie’s every breath, too scared to look away. People came and went, both nurses and family members, but she ignored them all, answering the attempts to cajole her into eating or changing into something more comfortable with silence. She did mutely hand over her weapon to Baker, not really caring what happened to it after that.

“I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad Mom’s not here…” A voice penetrated Eddie’s foggy consciousness and she couldn’t figure out what was going on. Why was she sleeping in a lumpy chair in a weird-smelling room? In a horrible flash, it all came back to her. Jamie was…Oh God. She fought against the exhaustion and hunger wearing her down, trying to force herself awake, but then someone spoke again.

“Me too. This was exactly what she was always afraid of.” Danny. At the corner of her sleep-blurred vision Eddie could see him sitting other side of the bed, an indistinct figure next to him.

“There’s supposed to be four of us Danny.” It was Erin, her voice wavering. “Four. Then there was three. I’m not strong enough for there just to be two.”

“That’s not gonna happen. We both know the kid’s too stubborn to die.” There wasn’t much heart in either of the sibling’s laughs. Eddie finally managed to scramble together some semblance of wakefulness and drag herself up into a semi-sitting position. Erin and Danny sat across from her, both of them looking about as worn down as Eddie was sure she must.

“Eddie…” Erin struggled to smile at her. “There’s been no change. Which is good.”

“Yeah.”

“They caught the other guy. He took a bullet so he didn't get very far.” It took Eddie a minute to figure out what Danny was talking about. The man who shot Jamie. She should be pleased that he’d been arrested, she supposed, but she felt nothing. Jamie was still hurt, so what difference did it make?

“Oh. Okay.”

“I’ll, er, I’ll call the office, see if they've made a decision on charges yet.” As she stood up, Erin touched Jamie’s shoulder gently and he stirred and tried to pull away. Erin looked between Eddie and Danny as if she wasn’t sure what she’d just seen. They all leant forward, Eddie holding her breath. Carefully, Erin reached out again. “Jamie?”

“Hmm.” He made a small noise, and shifted again, eyelids fluttering, trying to open.

“Nurse! Nurse! Get in here!” Danny hurried for the door, yelling down the corridor. Promptly, a pink-scrubbed nurse rushed in, shouldering Erin out of the way to get to Jamie, who continued to battle his way to consciousness.

“Jamie? Can you hear me?” The nurse checked the monitors, which had started to beep like crazy. Eddie stood up too, her tiredness forgotten, squeezing Jamie’s hand tight. It was only a slight possibility, but the doctor had told them that because of how much blood Jamie had lost, there could have been oxygen deprivation to the brain.

“Jamie.” She whispered. “Please be okay. Please.”

“Jamie?” Erin was practically stuck to the nurse’s back.

“Hmm.” Jamie’s eyes opened properly at last and he immediately screwed them shut again against the nurse’s pen light. “Ugh.”

He blinked a few more times and his gaze roamed around the room before settling on Eddie.

“Jamie? Can you speak?” He looked at her for a second like he was considering something. Then, very quietly, but very clearly, he said:

“Ouch.”

~

In typical Reagan fashion, Jamie didn’t take well to doctor-ordered recovery time. He was antsy to be out of the hospital within 24 hours of waking up and when he was finally released, was not happy to be told he had to take complete rest at home until his wound was fully healed.

Eddie had been told she could take as much time off as she needed, but Jamie persuaded her to go back to work after only ten days, insisting that they would drive each other crazy if they were cooped up inside together all day every day for much longer. She knew he was right, but that didn’t make her feel any better. Sgt. Croft, probably sensing that she was too distracted to be on the streets, manufactured some excuse for her to ride a desk for a while. On her first day back, her phone went off half an hour into her shift and she almost threw it across the squad room in her panic to answer it, a hundred nightmare scenarios running through her head, but it was just a text from Jamie.

_Pop just showed up, I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear. He says he’s just here to keep me company._ _I didn’t know that’s what they called babysitting these days. _

She’d forgotten Henry quietly promising at Sunday dinner that he’d make sure Jamie didn’t overdo it. Smiling with relief and affection, she tapped out a reply.

_ He’s just taking care of you – he’s your Grandpa, he doesn’t know how to do anything else. Besides, you can’t throw him out – doctor’s orders! _

_We’ll see. _

If she hadn’t been paying attention to her husband, Eddie might have thought that Jamie had gone straight back to his old self after the shooting. In a lot of ways he had – all the adages about Reagans being made of sterner stuff were based on a Hell of a lot of fact after all – but she didn’t miss the way he’d sometimes start awake in the middle of night, before immediately pretending he hadn’t, obviously trying not to disturb her. Then there were the times she had to speak to him twice, or nudge him gently, to get him to pay attention to her – she was all too familiar with his habit of disappearing into his own head, but this was more than that. What really told her that something was off was that he went to all of his Department mandated shrink appointments without a word of complaint.

“Jamie…” Eddie had gone back and forth in her mind a hundred times trying to decide what to say – or even whether to say anything at all. One night, she just couldn’t hold it in any longer. She’d worked a late tour and come home at almost 9pm to dinner waiting. Jamie had waited to eat with her, but he’d mostly pushed his food around his plate and responded absently to any conversation she’d tried to make. Lying in a bed a while later, she decided to take the bull by the horns, or at least try to. “I – I don’t want to push you, but if you need to talk about anything…You know I’m always here for you.”

The silence in response to this stretched out agonisingly. Eddie had her head on Jamie’s chest – having settled down super cautiously in order to stay away from his wound, despite the doctor saying it was now healed to the point where it would take something extreme to re-open it, and despite how much she knew such delicacy annoyed Jamie – and maybe the fact that she couldn’t see his face had given her a bit more courage. She felt him tense underneath her before he suddenly sighed.

“I thought I was going to die, Ed.” His voice was barely above a murmur, but in the silent, NY-skyline lit twilight of their bedroom she could hear him perfectly. She said nothing in return, afraid to break the spell. “In fact, I was convinced. When they were putting me in the ambulance, and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t stay awake, I was certain that was it. I – I wasn’t afraid, but all I could think about was Dad, and Danny, and Erin…Losing someone else, another empty chair at the table and another headstone in the family plot. And the last thing I remember thinking was that I couldn’t remember if I told you I loved you when I went out that morning.”

“Oh, Jamie…” Eddie could feel her tears seeping into the material of his t-shirt, and she involuntarily clung to him a little more tightly.

“And now I keep thinking about Joe and Linda and Vinny and Lori…Did I ever tell you, when Vinny got shot, I took one in the vest?”

“No…” This shocked Eddie. Yet another thing he’d kept bottled up for God knows how long. 

“Another inch or so one way and I would have been dead, too. Same this time, the doc said. How come I get another chance not once but twice, and none of them did?...I know there’s no answer to that, and thinking like that leads nowhere good, but…I just need some time to get my head straight.”

“I know we have different ways of dealing with stuff,” Eddie finally looked up, propping her chin on her arm. Gently, Jamie brushed her hair out of her eyes. His face was half in shadow, but she could see enough to recognise the tiny smile he gave her, acknowledging her understatement. “But I just want to help.”

“You are. Just by being you.” He stroked her cheek and she leant into the touch, feeling another tear leak out of her eye. “What’s _not_ helping is the damn Department doctors not clearing me for full duty because they’re shit-scared of getting their assess kicked if something – something _else_ – happen to the Commissioner’s kid on their watch. Everyone treating me with kid gloves is getting to me, too. Even Danny’s tip-toeing around me.”

“This really hit him hard. You didn’t see him at the hospital while you were unconscious. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for him, having lost Joe and Linda, and thinking he might lose you, too.”

“I know, it’s just…I’d find it a lot easier to get past this if everyone else would.”


	2. Two.

“On 11th March 2021, within the confines of the 29th precinct, Sergeant Jameson Reagan and Officer Rachel Witten responded to an armed robbery at a pharmacy in the Hamilton Heights neighbourhood. There, they exchanged gunfire with two heavily armed suspects, who were holding hostages inside the pharmacy. When a hostage attempted to flee Sergeant Reagan, without thought to his own safety, placed himself into the line of fire to protect this young woman’s life. Despite receiving potentially fatal injuries – “ Frank’s voice faltered just a fraction here – “Sergeant Reagan was able to take this woman to safety, shooting and killing one of the suspects in the process. Also under heavy fire, Officer Witten shot and wounded the second suspect and, most importantly, provided vital first aid to Sergeant Reagan, without which it is likely he would not have survived. Therefore, it is with great pride that I present Sergeant Reagan and Officer Witten with the NYPD’s most prestigious decoration, the Medal of Honor.”

Eddie felt like she could burst with pride as she watched Frank drape the medals around Jamie and Witten’s necks. Garrett fussed in the background, getting them to stand in place for photographs – Jamie clearly doing his best not to look uncomfortable as the flashes went off. He’d been a little leery about accepting the medal in the first place, but Eddie had persuaded him to as much for everyone else’s sake as his.

Witten didn’t exactly look thrilled with the attention either. Eddie imagined this had to be pretty disorienting for her – two years ago she was bussing tables in a coffee shop, terminated from the job she loved for an error of judgement and now here she was back in uniform getting the Department’s highest honour for saving the life of the Commissioner’s son. To her regret, Eddie had initially blamed Witten for what had happened, her grief and terror looking for somewhere to direct her anger, and choosing Jamie’s partner, whose job it had been to protect him. When Jamie – to his relief – had at last been cleared for duty, Eddie had failed to hide her surprise and disapproval when he told he’d rolled out with Witten again.

“After what happened?”

“What do you mean, after what happened?” Jamie had looked at her oddly, before his eyes widened in realisation. “You don’t know, do you? Eddie, Witten saved my life. Without her, I would have drowned in my own blood before the ambulance got there.”

After that, Eddie would have pinned that medal on Witten herself. Her attempts to thank her one-time partner for saving Jamie had embarrassingly ended up with her bursting into tears, which Rachel had been mortifyingly nice about, but Eddie was pretty sure she’d got across the message that she considered herself owing Witten one for life.

She still found herself silently freaking out about Jamie being back out on the streets, something she did her best to keep to herself considering how happy he clearly was to be back to work. Every time her phone rang on shift, she jumped out of her skin and every time a 10-85 or 10-13 was called in, she felt her heart pound and her stomach drop. Bellamy watched her like a hawk, probably concerned she was losing it, and sometimes she wondered if she was. It was irrational, not to mention hypocritical, for her to want Jamie not to be out on patrol, but she couldn’t help herself, not when every so often she would remember the sheer, bleak terror she’d felt when Gormley had told her Jamie had been shot.

This feeling finally bubbled over in the absolute last place she would have wanted it to – at Sunday dinner. Nicky and Erin were at odds over one of Erin’s subordinates’ handling of a suspect in a series of push-in robberies who Nicky and Cervi had collared fleeing from the scene of his last one. Three of the victims had picked him out of a line up, and he’d been found in possession of goods taken from their homes. It was a great collar, but the junior prosecutor who’d taken it on seemed to be too scared to throw the book at the guy. He was a kid from a middle class family, a Hudson graduate, who’d taken to crime to feed the drug habit picked up from too much partying at said college. This ADA seemed to have been swayed by the forceful personality of the expensive attorney the scumbag’s daddy had hired for him.

“The last lady he robbed was eighty-two!” Nicky waved her fork around to emphasise her point, forcing Danny to lean sideways or lose an eye. “He punched her in the face twice!”

“He has no priors apart from some low-grade possession…” Eddie could see Erin wasn’t exactly thrilled about taking this line, but she understood the impulse to stand up for your own. After all this time, she was sure her sister-in-law was used to being at cross-purposes with her family, but it couldn’t be easy getting the same grief from your own kid.

“And if he was a kid from the projects, she’d have used that to argue he should get the maximum! But because he’s some affluent frat boy he might end up with a slap on the wrist!” The ensuing silence pretty much demonstrated that Nicky had won the point – because everyone around that table knew she spoke an unfortunate truth – and everyone picked at their plates dispiritedly for a short while.

Jamie attempted to move the conversation on with an anecdote about a collar Witten and Serrano had made a couple of days before, when he was working the desk. The guy was high as a kite on bath salts or some other crazy substance like that, and had flipped his shit in a crystal shop of all places, ending up locked in the smashed up store wearing only his underwear. Somehow, the officers had managed to calm him down enough to get him into the RMP and back to the precinct where he’d immediately freaked out again while they were trying to book him in.

“The guy must have been a buck twenty soaking wet but it took six of us to get him in the cell once he’d lost it! He practically threw Tuna across the room.” For some reason this clicked something in Eddie’s head, and all of her worry and anxiety and lingering grief and guilt just exploded inside her. She scrambled out of her chair and fled the room, just enough presence of mind left not to want to make any more of a scene at the table.

A little while later Jamie found her in his old room, lying miserably on the bed staring absently at his desk, which now held only a couple of trophies and a picture of him and Erin as kids, his sister dressed for what looked like prom.

“Ed?” He leant against the door frame, brows furrowed. “Want to talk about it?”

“I’m stupid.”

“Huh? I mean, no you’re not, but – ok, what’s going on?” He sat on the edge of the bed, resting his hand on Eddie’s leg.

“I’m just being ridiculous. Ever since you went back to work I’ve been terrified of something else happening to you. I know that’s the job, and the likelihood of lightning striking twice is like, nil, but – I can’t help it. And I’ve got no right to complain considering I’m out there doing the same things as you every day, but – maybe this is ridiculous, or maybe it’s just because of how much I love you, but I’m so much more scared of losing you than I am of anything happening to me.”

“Oh, Ed. Don’t you think I feel the same way about you?” Jamie took her hand in his, entwining their fingers. For a moment, he frowned at the floor like he was thinking something over and then nodded like he’d made a decision. “I’ve got something to tell you. I was thinking about telling everyone at dinner, but then I thought it’s be better if I talked to you first…I’ve had a job offer.”

“What? Like, in the private sector?”

“No. In the Legal Bureau. Deputy Chief Michaels came to see me at the precinct. They need a supervisor in PALS. A lot of those positions are held by civilians, but cops can take them and, well, I’m qualified for it…” He trailed off, and Eddie just stared at him, trying to process what he’d just told her.

“Do – do you want to take it?”

“I…don’t know,” he replied, carefully. “It’s a good opportunity, and a little more money…and I’d be off the streets at last.”

“Oh…Wait. Now that I’ve said all that, are you thinking you should take the job because I’ll feel better if you’re riding a desk?”

“Well..”

“No, Jamie!” Eddie got herself up onto her knees so she could look him face to face. “I mean, I’m not going to deny that I would be happy if I knew you were safe all the time, but I would _never_ ask you to give up doing what you love for me, just like I know you’d never ask me that. If you want to take this job, I’ll support you 100% and I’ll always be crazy proud of you no matter what you do, but you have to do it for you. So…do you really want this job?”

“No.” He sighed. “Not really. I gave up being a lawyer for a reason. Besides, if I worked for the Legal Bureau I’d end up working with Erin a lot and I think that could only end in bloodshed.”

“I’ll tell her you said that!” She laughed, but then looked at him seriously. “I love you. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I do.” Jamie closed the small gap between them, resting their foreheads together. “I love you, too.”

Eddie wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in the soft wool of his sweater, smiling when she felt him kiss the top of her head. They sat like that for a few moments until there was a discreet cough from somewhere in the vicinity of the door. Frank stood there, holding two steaming cups.

“Thought a cup of coffee might be appropriate.”

“Yeah, it really would.” Eddie rubbed her eyes, no longer damp but probably still embarrassingly red. “Sorry, I made kind of a spectacle of myself back there, huh.”

“You haven’t invited one of your siblings outside for a fight, so I think you’re good.” He raised his eyebrows at Jamie who pretended not to notice. The coffee was good – Eddie had learned that one of the many wonders of the Reagan family was their apparent inability to serve anything at family dinner that didn’t taste fantastic. “Better?”

“Yeah,” Eddie shared a soft smile with Jamie. “Much better.”

~

Eddie’s parents might not have taught her much, but one thing they had was that life had a way of kicking you in the teeth just when you thought everything was going perfectly.

Perfect was certainly how everything appeared to be. Jamie was completely recovered from his shooting – physically at least, and was generally feeling much better otherwise – and everyone else was going on wheels at the job. Danny and Baez closed a multiple homicide which had stumped the detectives in the two other precincts where the perp had dropped bodies; Nicky worked her first undercover, helping to bust a ring of drug pushers plaguing a couple of hot clubs uptown; Jack got accepted into a Master’s programme at John Jay and Erin managed to Al Capone a known gangster who’d skated on a dozen violent offences by nailing him on money laundering.

Outside of the job, things were looking up for everyone, too. Nicky officially moved in with her boyfriend, which caused some disapproving muttering around the Sunday dinner table from the old guard, but everyone was happy for her really. However, it was Danny who really surprised on that front. He’d seemed a lot more cheerful for a while, which most of the family had initially put down to his good run of cases recently. That is, until Erin, on a catch up night out with a couple of old college friends, had spotted him coming out of a nice restaurant in Midtown with a tall, pretty redhead. Naturally, being the good sister she was, she’d shared this with the entire family at Sunday dinner.

“Oh yeah, that’s Charlotte.” Sean said, matter-of-factly. You could have knocked Danny down with a feather at that remark.

“You knew?”

“Of course I knew. Plus, I checked your phone.”

“What?!”

“I wasn’t snooping. It kept beeping one day and I thought it might be about a case.” Sean protested, and then shrugged. “Jack knows, too, by the way. I was going to ask when we could meet her. Maria says she’s nice.”

“You talked to Baez about it?!”

“Just ‘cause I ran into her at Starbucks.”

When Danny had recovered from this exchange, and the rest of the family had stopped laughing, they finally managed to pry some actual information from him. It turned out Danny had been seeing Charlotte, aka Detective McKenna of TARU, for a few months without telling anyone, mainly because he didn’t want to rush into anything, partly for Jack and Sean’s sake – although that was apparently moot.

In typical Danny fashion, he declined to give anything more than the bare facts and couldn’t be drawn on promising to introduce her to the rest of the family, but Eddie was doubted anybody had missed a look in his eye that she was pretty sure she hadn’t seen since before Linda died.

All in all, everything seemed be coming up roses, which is how Eddie knew the other shoe had dropped when Jamie’s phone blared out from the bedside table in the middle of the night. Immediately, her mind cycled through every awful possibility it could before she remembered that Nicky was working midnights.

_Oh, God, no_.

Jamie said virtually nothing throughout the duration of the short phone call, except asking whoever was on the other end if they wanted him to come over. That wasn’t what Eddie was expecting, but his grim expression as he hung up told her something bad had definitely happened.

“Is it Nicky?” She eventually asked, unable to bear the suspense any longer.

“No. That was Dad. It’s Pop.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t been expecting that at all. Henry Reagan might have been into his 90s, but he was still as spry and strong-willed as the day she’d first met him. He’d seemed to her almost eternal. Eventually, she managed to coax a clearly stunned Jamie into telling her what happened.

“Dad says it was quick. And peaceful. He went to sleep in his chair after dinner and…” Eddie didn’t need him to continue.

“Oh, Jamie…” She rested her head on his shoulder and wrapped her arms around him. They sat there in silence in the dark for a very long time.

It was quite literally standing room only in the church for Henry’s funeral. What few of his contemporaries were still living were there, along with the children and grandchildren of those no longer around, many of them dressed in NYPD blue. There were cops there from just about every division in the Department, along with officers from Jersey City, Pennsylvania, Boston, even as far afield as Los Angeles and Houston. Eddie had heard Frank say that a couple of retired Metropolitan Police chiefs had flown in especially. The Bishop of New York conducted the service, and a condolence card had come from the Vatican, which she was sure Henry would be smiling down on much more than the one from the White House. She doubted there were many Irish Catholics who could count the Grand Rebbe and his attendants as mourners at their funeral either, although they elected to stand on the steps rather than enter the Church.

It was a highly emotional service, Frank delivering a typically beautiful eulogy for his family’s beloved patriarch. By the end, Eddie’s vision was clouded with tears, which she couldn’t wipe away for fear of staining her dress gloves. Jamie stared straight ahead for the duration, apparently calm, but his grip on her hand was like iron. He only let go when it came time to carry out the coffin.

The wake was, although Eddie couldn’t judge from personal experience, a typically Irish affair. Despite the heavy law enforcement presence, the whiskey flowed freely, as did the chatter and, gradually, laughter. Almost everyone there had a wealth of anecdotes about Henry, and they were all too happy to share them.

“…and then Henry grabs a broom and shoves the handle in the guy’s spokes! He flipped right over the handlebars and head first into a pile of trash cans!” Although there was loud laughter from the room at large, Jamie could barely raise a smile next to her. Eddie stroked his arm gently and he managed a small twist of his lips. She knew how hard this had hit him – his Mom and Joe and Henry had been the family members Jamie was closest too, and one by one they had all been lost, some more prematurely than others.

Erin appeared in the kitchen doorway and some sort of silent communication went on between brother and sister. Jamie glanced sideways at her and Eddie nodded encouragingly; she could see Danny hovering in the back and she sensed that the siblings needed some time on their own. Eddie had known and loved Henry, too, but that was nothing compared to a lifetime of being his grandchild.

“You know, it’s like going back in time looking at those kids.” Eddie started at the voice beside her, turning to find a silver-haired lady smiling kindly at her. It was probably un-sisterly of her, but Eddie thought her dress uniform rather incongruous. She had never a woman that age in uniform before – in her head all cops from that era looked like Henry. The older woman extended her hand.

“Colleen McGuire. Henry and I were partners, back in the day. He was one of the few willing to ride with a broad.” She laughed.

“Eddie – “

“Oh, I know who you are, dear. Last time I saw Henry he was full of what a wonderful girl Jamie had found for himself. That was a little while after you got married, I think. Never managed to see him again after that.” Colleen smiled sadly. “Catching up with someone is one of those things you think you can always do tomorrow. That is, until there aren’t any more tomorrows. Oh, listen to me all sentimental! Henry would tell me to cut that out right now.”

“I think Henry would be pleased to see so many people celebrating his life.”

“I know he would.” Colleen sipped her wine, and then returned to her original theme. “When I ran into Danny in the hallway I thought I’d walked into 1955!”

“They look that much alike?”

“Oh, definitely. Your boy’s just like his father when he first started on the job.”

“Minus the moustache?” Eddie smiled.

“Oh, Frank didn’t have the moustache back then. Not right at the very beginning anyhow.”

“Really?” Eddie absolutely could not imagine Frank Reagan clean shaven. If someone had asked her to picture her father-in-law as an infant, her mind would probably fill in a little moustache.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Colleen had obviously followed her line of thought and was smiling wryly at her. Abruptly, her lips curved downwards, and she looked sadly around the room for a moment before turning back to Eddie. “I heard about what happened to Jamie, about him getting hurt. If you don’t mind a piece of advice from an eccentric old woman, hold on tight to what you have, because you never know when it might be gone, and because some people are never lucky enough to have what you do.”

Eddie pondered on what the underlying meaning of those words might mean in regards to Henry Reagan’s past for a while, but ultimately decided that something so far gone was not hers to start raking over now. She didn’t disregard the ultimate wisdom of Colleen’s advice, however, especially not a few days later when she found Jamie standing alone at the cemetery early in the morning. She’d woken up to a note saying he’d gone out for a walk; it hardly took a cop to figure out where he might have gone. For a while her knowledge that he might need some solitude had warred with the desire to make sure he knew he didn’t have to go through this alone, the latter ultimately winning out. He didn’t look surprised to see her, nor displeased to be disturbed.

“Hey, Ed.”

“Hey.” She slid under his arm, wrapping her own around his waist, laying her cheek against the soft leather of his jacket. They stood there quietly for a while, accompanied by the usual mismatched soundscape of NYC green spaces, birds twittering over a backdrop of 9 to 5 traffic. Dewdrops glittered on the headstones in the watery sun, its gradual progress upward casting a shadow over the cemetery’s newest addition:

_Sacred to the Memory of _

_Henry Matthew Reagan_

_1928-2022_

_Safely Home_

~

“Well, this has been comin’ for a while, and God knows my wife’s been waitin’ on it, but what finally told me it was time to bang in my papers was my old rookie becomin’ my boss!” A ripple of laughter followed this, and Renzulli grinned at Jamie, who was trying fairly hard to fade into the background, which was pretty hard considering he was the only one in the room wearing a white shirt.

Even though Jamie had turned down the Legal Bureau, another job opportunity had ended up coming along not too long after. Thanks to a combination of hiring freezes, ad hoc promotions and too many retirements within a short space of time, NYPD management had suddenly realised they were going to be facing a significant short fall in the upper ranks. To deal with this, they had decided to mass fast track as many suitable candidates as they could.

Gormley had been promoted to Captain, and was now finally Chief of Department officially, which was great news, and Captain Hollis was now Deputy Inspector, which was less great, but at least it meant even less of a chance of encountering him again, especially as he’d been shipped out to Staten Island. To say Jamie had been surprised to find a letter in his official department post offering him a promotion to Lieutenant was an understatement – although he was technically eligible, there were numerous other sergeants with more time in at rank than him, and there was of course the ever present Reagan Factor counting against him.

Eddie had run into Abigail Baker at One PP shortly after and managed to extract some sort of explanation from her.

“Well,” Baker pursed her lips, “for _some_ reason Sgt. Reagan’s file kept ending up at the bottom of the pile until a certain party rather forcefully pointed out that if Sgt. Reagan had a different surname then someone with his record and qualifications would be at the _top_ of the pile.”

“I see.” Eddie smiled. “Well, maybe you could convey my thanks to that ‘certain party’”.

“I will.” Baker gave her a sly smile in return, and Eddie could’ve sworn the detective actually winked at her as the elevator doors closed.

In the end, Jamie hadn’t wrestled too hard with the decision to take the job, deciding he’d spent too long wavering about taking his last promotion, or making any kind of move at all away from being in the bag, and knowing this could be his last chance in a while. Some guys – like Renzulli – were content to tap out at Sergeant, and most of them were great cops, but Eddie had always known that as much as Jamie talked about being happy where he was, he was too smart and too ambitious, not for himself but for what he could do on the job. The promotion had been contingent on passing the exam, but Eddie never had any doubt that he would. Jamie might claim law school had made him hate exams, but it has also made him damn good at them.

In a pleasant surprise, he’d been sent back to their old stomping ground at the 12th. He’d been a little apprehensive about being in charge of cops he used to work with, but there had been a decent turnover since they’d left and their remaining colleagues were pretty happy to see him back, even Reynolds. Eddie had heard on the grapevine that the previous L-T – now retired – had been kind of a hardass, and not in the ‘maintaining high standards’ way Jamie could be if he was in the mood.

Renzulli had put in his papers about two months after Jamie transferred in, much to Jamie’s disappointment, but Renzulli had 30 years in, a half dozen commendations and a gradually worsening arthritic knee, so it was a pretty understandable decision.

It was a testament to him that his coffee and doughnuts and definitely-not-a-drop-of-whisky-in-the-coffee-no-sir send off in the squad room was packed to the gills with officers who’d served with him over the years. Kara Walsh, now a Sergeant herself, working out of the 8th, had stuck her head in, and Brenda Potemkin stood in the corner, sharp in her Mounted Division uniform.

Eddie had managed to drop in on her meal break. Jamie’s job offer from Legal had finally prompted her to make some decisions about her own future. She’d elected to pass on a Sergeant’s position for now and instead put in the time for her gold shield – she’d done a little time working small scale stuff out of the squad but after a successful collar in a series of sexual assaults she’d been offered a secondment to SVU. It was difficult work, but it gave her a lot of satisfaction to help those women and children, and sometimes men, who had suffered some of the worst crimes imaginable. She only had a few more months before she was officially made up to detective, and could decide whether to stay with the squad or branch out into something new.

“End of an era, Sarge.” Jamie toasted Renzulli with his coffee mug – he was on duty so Eddie knew his would be virgin.

“How many times I told ya ya don’t gotta call me that no more, kid?...Boss.” Renzulli chuckled.

“Place won’t be the same without you.” Eddie smiled. Renzulli had been her first boss, and a formative influence in her career. Aside from Jamie, she had to give him the biggest slice of the credit for making her into the cop she was today.

“Ah, you’ll all forget me in a week or two. Relief’ll be in good hands with Lin.” Sgt. Lin was a tall, elegant Asian-American woman in her early 40s, whose only obvious similarity with Renzulli was the shame shaped reading glasses, but Eddie had liked her immediately. She was clearly smart and efficient and Eddie sensed she and Jamie would get on like a house on fire.

“Phone for you, Boss. One PP.” Witten stuck her head around the door. Jamie had had her transferred in along with him, as well as Serrano and Johnson.

“What do they want?” Jamie frowned.

“It’s Capt. Gormley, something about security for the VPs visit?”

“I’m coming.” Jamie sighed.

“Didn’t your dad tell ya? Bein’ a boss sucks.” Eddie laughed along with Renzulli as Jamie departed with a shake of his head. “He’s gonna be a damn good one.”

“Yeah, he is.” Eddie smiled.

“You know, I never told him on account of I didn’t want him gettin’ a big head, but Joe used to brag about him all the time. His brilliant Havard law school kid brother. He’d be proud fit to burst to see him with those bars.”

“You should tell him that.”

“Maybe I will.”

~

“So…Detective.” Jamie smiled down at her and Eddie absolutely beamed in return. She’d been officially promoted a week ago, and received her shiny new gold shield that very day.

“Yes, Boss?” She replied, affecting innocence.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” They were about six blocks from their apartment, heading out for a celebratory night out. Not for Eddie’s promotion, however, but for Jamie’s birthday. He generally dodged doing anything for his birthday, memories of Mary Margaret armed with a party hat still lingering, but Eddie had insisted.

“Not much further.” She tugged on his hand and he followed her obediently. Another block and they were there, the red awning glowing orange under the streetlights, which burnished the restaurant’s name gold: _Cazenove’s_. They’d come here to celebrate their engagement, and on their first wedding anniversary, but they hadn’t been in quite a while. Jamie smiled when he saw the place, but immediately frowned when they got to the entrance, which was in semi-darkness.

“Did you make a reservation? It looks closed.”

“Oh, it’s open.” To prove her point, Eddie opened the door and then she took a deep breath and looked Jamie in the eye. “First, it’s very important that you know I love you, and also that this wasn’t my idea. Erin made me.”

“Wha – “ Before he could finish, Eddie gave him a bodily shove across the threshold.

“SURPRISE!!” The lights burst on, revealing a large group of Jamie’s family, friends and colleagues, a banner proclaiming ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY’ in big letters and two oversize balloons in the shape of the digits ‘4’ and ‘0’. Eddie stuck close to Jamie’s back, not putting it past him to just cut and run.

“Please don’t divorce me.” She whispered in his ear, only 99.9% joking.

“You’re lucky that’s against my religion.” He muttered back before doing his best to smile as Erin rushed forward to hug him.

“Happy birthday!”

“Thanks, Sis.”

Eddie had been a bit reluctant to collude with the family in organising this surprise party, knowing as she did that it wasn’t really what Jamie would want. However, she also knew what the family had been through this past year and a bit, and throwing a huge bash for their youngest member’s 40th birthday – a birthday he had come terrifyingly close to not seeing – might be just what they needed.

“Can you believe it, Sis? Our kid brother, the big 4-0?” Danny slung an arm around Jamie’s neck and grinned. Jamie grimaced, but he didn’t really mean it. It could never be said that Erin didn’t plan a Hell of a party, and as much as he’d probably deny it in the future, Eddie suspected Jamie was actually having a pretty good time.

“Yeah, how old are you, again?” Jamie raised his eyebrows at his elder brother, who immediately looked slightly less cheerful.

“Danny’s not old, he’s vintage.” Charlotte laughed and Danny let go of Jamie to catch her by the waist, kissing her on the cheek.

“Nah, he’s old,” said Sean, who was morosely nursing a ginger ale. At any other family gathering, a 19-year-old college sophomore might have been allowed a sneaky beer, but not one where only about six of the guests weren’t cops.

“Ah, I gotta go.” Nicky was also alcohol free, but only because she was working a midnight. After draining the remainder of her lime and soda, she hugged Jamie tightly. “Happy birthday, Old Timer.”

“Get out!”

“Yes, Boss!” With a laugh, Nicky was gone.

“Excuse me!” Frank barely raised his voice, but it was enough to immediately command the attention of the room. The music was turned off, and all eyes were on the Commissioner. Eddie could have sworn a couple of the guests involuntarily stood to attention. “I have been informed by my daughter that it would be appropriate for me to say a few words, even if my son might disagree. For his sake, I will make a _few_ words.”

“Hope they’re embarrassing ones!” Danny called, and received an elbow in the ribs from Erin for his trouble.

“Sometimes, I can hardly credit that forty years have gone by since Mary and I brought Jamie home for the first time. Since then, as with all my children, he has never done anything but make me extraordinarily proud to call him my son. Now, they say age brings wisdom, but Jamie’s always had plenty of that, so instead I’ll offer him this advice: Once you get old you can get out of all sorts of social obligations by just saying you’re tired.”

“So _that’s_ your secret!” Piped up a voice from the back and the whole room burst out laughing. Frank chuckled, and waited for the noise to die down.

“There are a few people who would have liked to be here to celebrate with us this evening, but sadly can’t be: Jamie’s mother, Mary, his brother, Joe, and…his grandparents, Betty and Henry. So, I’d like to keep them in mind as we raise a toast to the birthday boy: To Jamie!”

“To Jamie!” Chorused the room. After that, he only had to face the embarrassment of being sung to and then cutting the cake, which was also in the shape of ‘40’.

“You really had to rub it in, didn’t you?” Jamie raised his eyebrows at his sister.

“Can’t let you forget you’re old like the rest of us now.”

“I’ll never be as old as you.” Wisely, he beat a hasty retreat after that.

“I have a present for you.” Eddie said, when they finally got a moment alone, sitting together in a cosy corner while she worked her way through both her slice of cake and his. He’d wordlessly slid his plate over to her when she finished hers, flashing her a teasing smile as he did so. “A special one.”

“Oh, yeah?” He raised his eyebrows, and she laughed.

“No, not _that_ sort of present. Well, that’s not what I’m talking about right now, anyway.” She grinned. “Maybe later, though.”

“So, what is it?”

“I was going to tell you another time, but suddenly right now seems perfect.” Biting her lip, she wondered what to say, but then decided actions spoke louder than words. Taking his hand in both of hers, she pressed his palm flat against her stomach. She chose to credit the alcohol for the fact it took Jamie a couple of blinks and a moment’s frowning to get her meaning, at which point his face lit up with that damn smile of his that always just completely melted her.

“Really?”

“Yep. Really. We’re gonna have a baby, Reagan. Or a baby Reagan, if you prefer.” After a moment’s contemplation, she decided to kiss that stunned look off his face, smiling against his mouth at the second it took him to get himself together enough to wrap his arms around her. When they pulled apart, he looked into her eyes, reaching up to stroke her cheek gently.

“We’ve been through a Hell of a lot together, Ed. But this might be the biggest thing we’re ever gonna do. You ready, partner?”

“You bet I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> Just a few things:  
\- I am not from New York or even the US so I was deliberately vague about things like geography, but I cited the 29th Precinct as covering the same area that the real life 30th Precinct does.  
\- For the purposes of this fic, I gave the family the following birth years: Henry (1928), Frank (1950), Danny (1971), Joe (1973), Erin (1975), Jamie (1982), Nicky (1996), Jack (2001), Sean (2003). This is based partly on info given in the show - which is not always consistent! - and guesswork on my part.  
\- Lori was the officer killed in Eddie's first ep 4x01  
\- Serrano was the officer who accused Jamie of being racist in 9x18, but I figured she might have redeemed herself since then!  
\- I don't recall if McKenna from TARU has a first name in the show, but I gave her one here; I'm also not 100% sure if she's a cop or a civilian, but I feel like I've seen her wearing a badge? 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
